Sweet Bird of Prey
by KeladryB
Summary: You have to respect a woman like that. CJToby


Title: Sweet Bird of Prey  
Author: keladryb: keladrywrites@aol.com  
livejournal: , website:   
Fandom: The West Wing  
Summary: You have to respect a woman like that.  
Disclaimer: Not mine, Don't sue.

Notes: Thanks to Eodrakken for the beta and support.

**Sweet Bird of Prey**

It makes sense that it should feel this way   
That you slowly fade and yet still remain   
As if to say: everything matter in such an invisible way   
As if to say: it's okay.  
Fly...away  
--Poe "Fly Away"

You hear her before you see her. She's singing along with Aretha Franklin. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. And, you realize, you have to respect a woman who can belt out a song, when she must know that she's tone deaf. You're disappointed when she kills the engine of her Tercel and the music stops. You try not to stare as she climbs out with those legs that just seem to go on forever. You avert your eyes when she notices you staring.

You don't say anything to her, not then. You wait; you wait until the joint has been passed around, until Alice excuses herself to go throw up in the bathroom. You decide that night to break up with her, because you don't want to be with a woman who can't hold her liquor. She can, though, this long-legged respect-demanding woman. She could probably drink you under the table. You have to respect a woman who can hold her liquor, and her weed.

You sneak outside to the balcony, half-hoping she'll follow you, half-alarmed when she does. You pretend not to notice her, but you both know she's not fooled. You inhale the California air, stare across the night sky to the Golden Gate Bridge, glowing bright against the night sky.

As though she can hear your thoughts, she says "It's the Bay Bridge. You can't see the Golden Gate from here. People think you can, but you can't. It's the Bay Bridge."

You nod, and fumble in your pockets for a cigarette. She supplies the light. "Thanks," you say, inhaling the bitter smoke. Cigarettes aren't as sweet as pot, and it always takes you a minute to remember that.

"Yeah. Claudia Jean," she says and leans up against the iron railing, so close to you that you can feel the heat coming off her body, dulling the cut of the wind.

"Toby," you say, wanting to edge closer, wanting to back away.

"You're here with Alice," she tells you, as though it's something you hadn't been aware of.

"Yeah," you say, and take a long drag of your cigarette. "Alice." You repeat her name to remember it, because right now you want to be a million miles away from Alice and her long brown hair and millions of freckles and lack of alcohol tolerance.

"You're not a very good boyfriend," she observes, but there's no judgment in her voice.

"No," you agree. You want to tell her that you're breaking up with Alice first thing in the morning. You want to tell her that Alice never made you happy and not to judge you by her childish naïveté, by her lack of goals or beliefs or concerns about the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket.

"You've been watching me all night," she says, and you can only nod your assent as you puff away on your cigarette. Finally, she turns and goes back inside, leaving you alone with your cigarette and your self-pity.   
  
*

Alice cries when you tell her. She cries and you don't offer her comfort, because it's not the sort of thing you do. You let her cry, and you whisper that you're sorry as you walk out the door. You sit down outside, on the steps of her dorm, and you light a cigarette. You try unsuccessfully to blow circles with the smoke. You don't hear her approaching.

"You're holding your tongue wrong," she observes, and takes your cigarette without asking first. She takes a drag, then blows a perfect "O". You watch as it floats up into the sky and disappears.

"Show off," you mutter, and she laughs.

She lights a cigarette of her own, and the two of you smoke in silence, until yours burns out and you crush the butt into the pavement. You watch her smoke, and wonder what it would be like to kiss her.

She's looking around the quad, looking at benches and people and other dorms. Looking anywhere but at you. You think this is a good sign. "You go to school here?" You ask her, and you know it's lame, but you just want to talk to her and you can't think of anything else to say.

"Yeah," she says, but she doesn't volunteer anymore information.

You light another cigarette and stare at the sky. "Grad student?" you ask, because she seems too put together to still be an undergrad.

"Yeah. Mass Communications," she says, then finally looks at you, takes an interest in--"You?"

"Nanh. Went to City College of New York. Now I'm working on Hodgeson's campaign. New York 13th congressional--"

"You'll lose," she says. "A democrat from Staten Island? No chance."

You shrug. "But you've still got to try, you know? You've still got to take a gamble, got to--you've got to try, is all."

"Yeah," she nods. "You've got to try."

"What's your undergrad degree in?" You ask, trying to steer the conversation away from you, away from your resentment over knowing that your guy's gonna lose.

"PoliSci. Also here at Berkeley," she answers and steals your cigarette again. "If you don't smoke it, it's just a waste."

"Yeah," you agree. "I broke up with Alice this morning."

"Yeah?" she says. "How'd that go?"

"She cried," you admit, but you don't feel ashamed. Not in front of her.

"Yeah," she says with certain sadness in her voice that makes you look at her, really look at her. And then you see the dark circles under her eyes, the weariness in her posture. "I'm not usually this morose," she finally says, and she doesn't need to say anything else, because you understand. You understand that she's been hurt, too deeply and too recently. You understand that she is raw. You understand that she sings along with Aretha but she feels like she's dying inside. 

You tear open your pack of cigarettes, and they scatter onto the concrete steps. You scrawl your phone number and address on the inside of the pack. "I have to go," you explain. "I have to go back to New York." You offer the scrap to her, but she doesn't extend a hand for it, so you leave it on the step next to her.

"Yeah," she says without looking at you. You get up then, and you leave, but you can't help looking back, and you see her slipping something into her pocket. You smile to yourself as you walk away.  
  
*  
  
You go back to New York, and you try to forget her. But when Hodgeson loses, her prediction is your first thought, and you wish you could call her to tell her she was right. You're sure that she knows, but you wonder if she thinks of you when the votes are tallied. You take a job working for Jorgenson in the California 9th, and you know that taking the job is a testament to how bad you are at forgetting people.

The phone rings, as you're packing everything you own into cardboard boxes, preparing for the move, and you answer, not really caring who's on the other end.

"Toby," she says. "It's me." She doesn't say anything more, but even after all this time, you know who it is.

"Claudia Jean," you reply.

"C.J., nowadays," and she laughs a little. "Now they call me C.J."

"C.J.," you repeat, rolling the letters around on your tongue. "It suits you."

"Yeah," she says.

You want to ask her why she's calling, want to ask her why she didn't call sooner. You light a cigarette and sit down on a box containing books and your mother's good dishes.

"I was getting rid of old clothes, giving them to good will, and I found your number in the pocket of an old pair of jeans, so I thought"

"Yeah," you say. Then again: "Yeah." You tell her that you're coming to California, tell her about Jorgenson.

She listens to you ramble on for more minutes than you know you should. "Yeah," she finally says. "I know."

"Oh," you say. 

"I've been volunteering on the campaign. And working on my thesis. The Media's Role in Demoralizing the American Woman."

"Sounds fascinating," you say, and you almost mean it.

You agree to meet for coffee the day before you start work, and she gives vague directions to a place in North Berkeley. You're happy, for the first time in recent memory, when you leave your apartment for the last time. You consider making this move to California a permanent one.   
  
*

She's waiting for you when you arrive, but you're late, so that's to be expected. She's put on weight since a year and a half ago, and it looks good on her. The circles under her eyes are gone, and she flashes you a huge grin when she sees you. When you get closer she embraces you, kisses you, and you're too surprised to kiss her back. She drags you by the arm into the coffee shop, and you pay for her coffee. 

You talk about politics, about her thesis, about how Reagan is probably the worst thing this country's seen since, well, Nixon. She seems happy, idealistic, and you're not annoyed by her idealism. It just makes you like her even more. She sets her coffee cup down, and you seize the moment to kiss her, because you didn't get to do it right the first time. She kisses you back, and she tastes like coffee and nicotine and Doublemint gum. Then she takes you by the hand and leads you to that same Tercel, drives you back to her apartment and has you stripped down almost before you get in the door. You hardly recognize her as the same woman who blew smoke rings in the air on your ex-girlfriend's steps.

You come too fast, because it's been so long, because you've spent more nights than you should have fantasizing about her. You apologize, sheepishly. She guides your hand between her legs, and it's not long before she comes too. Later, you'll respect her for it. Right now, your head is spinning too fast to process much of anything. 

You read her thesis in bed, her head resting on your chest, and you fill the page with red ink in your mind. She's good, but you can't help yourself. You make love twice more between sunset and sunrise, and she drives you to work the next day.

You sublet the studio you'd leased for the campaign season. You've only spent one night there. You buy red pens, and you make all those marks you wanted to make the first day. She fights with you on some points and lets others go. You both work hard on the campaign, and when Jorgenson loses, she sees it as a personal defeat. You've gotten used to these defeats, and comfort her with cigarettes and sex. She finishes her thesis and you watch her walk to the podium in her cap and gown. 

After graduation, she takes you to a bar on Telegraph packed full of recent Berkeley grads. You sip your scotch and feel old. She drinks beer and looks young. You kiss her goodbye, and she's not surprised when you tell her you have a plane to catch.

You wish she were. You wish you could explain. You wish you could tell her that you're leaving because you have to. Because this isn't something you can deal with right now. You wish you could give her all the lame excuses you made up in your mind about work, about New York. You wish you could tell her so she could rip it all to shreds and convince you to stay. You wish she'd tear all your arguments apart and make you admit to her what you're not ready to admit to yourself.

But she doesn't, and you take a shuttle to the airport and you pace the terminal, hoping to catch a glimpse of those legs walking towards you. You don't, of course, and you spend the whole plane ride wondering if you've made a mistake.


End file.
